Somewhere in the bowels of this blog repose my musings on deer. I recall many moons ago writing that because deer are the most ubiquitous of early earthenware figures, we don't take them seriously enough. All deer are not equal. Every now and again, you find a superb example, and they should be rated as rare and desirable. As a collector, I know I reach deep into my wallet when something is particularly fine and rare---after all, shouldn't collecting be about quality rather than quantity? I would rather have a few great figures than lots of mediocre ones. And so it gladdened my heart to see this splendid pair of deer in fabulous condition bound on to John Howard's site last week.

I was gratified to see that John attributed these deer to the potter Samuel Hall, based on their bocages. Note the bocage has acorns on it. Other potters used acorns on their bocages, but Hall favored painting his red or blue. Also, the acorns are really mere blobs that are integral to the structure of the leaves---in other words, they were molded in one with the bocage leaves.

A curious feature strengthens the Hall attribution. As might be expected, the bocage leaves are oak leaves, assembled in a frond. Other potters also used triple-oak-leaf bocage fronds, but Hall's oak leaves tend to be rather poorly modeled. As if to make up for this, Hall paid particular attention to the back of each leaf, tooling it to emphasise the central vein. I see this quirky little feature again and again on figures that link to Hall.

To help bring this all together, I show a marked Hall figure with the same bocage.

The backs of all the bocage leaves on this HALL figure are also heavily tooled, as you would expect. I bought this little figure from Andrew Dando a while ago--a nice addition to my reference collection:)

I concede, with surprise, that attribution is as much an art as a science. There is something about Hall figures that makes them recognizable to my brain, but I can't articulate it well enough to define it. Again and again, I have thought a very ordinary little bocage figure to be a Hall figure--and this suspicion has been confirmed by the mark impressed in the back.

The Hall deer did not stay on John's site for long. Despite a hefty price tag--and they were worth every penny of it because where else will you find a pair of deer so attractive and in such fine condition?--they bounded off the site and onto a collector's shelf within two or three days. Bravo! What a lovely purchase.

As a post script: There is not much currently for sale in the way of figures I haven't seen before, so this bull baiting spill vase caught my eye. It is more naive than most, and I think the coloring really pretty. Currently at Nestegg Antiques.